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Nobody has ever heard of Oxford Dictionary's word of the year

"Youthquake" was first coined in the '60s to describe rising youth culture.

Gianluca Mezzofiore

on December 15, 2017

Nobody has ever heard of Oxford Dictionary's word of the year

Credit: Getty Images

Online dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com pick their words of the year based on the frequency of lookups, hence the presence of popular words such as "feminism" and "complicit".

Oxford Dictionaries, instead, opts for a different, more complicated process, trying to select a word that captures the "the zeitgeist, that defining spirit or mood of the moment", as President of Dictionaries Casper Grathwohl explained in a blog post.

It has to be a term that embodies not only the social and political change of the past year but also reflects the change in the way we use language.

But their choice for the 2017 Word of the Year is a blast from the past that most people have never heard of: "Youthquake", defined as "a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people".

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Lexicographers who harnessed a huge amount of data to get to this conclusion saw a significant increase -- 400% -- in the usage of "youthquake" in 2017 compared to 2016.

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A surge of young voters contributed to the surprise performance of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the snap election called by Prime Minister Theresa May in April. Chants of "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn could be heard almost everywhere at Glastonbury -- even at the silent disco.

The word was also used in New Zealand in September to discuss young people’s engagement in politics.

But what's the story behind the term?

Diana Vreeland, former editor-in-chief of Vogue, coined "youthquake" in 1965 to describe a year of tumultuous change and the birth of youth culture sweeping first England, France, and then the U.S.

Grathwohl calls it a word "we can all rally behind" and "imbued with hope".

However, people online who never heard of it were quite critical of the choice: